Over the weekend, Isaiah Poole over at Truthout wrote, This Statistic Should Shut Down Any Talk of Cutting Social Security. The statistic: “36 percent of workers, according to one poll, have less than $1,000 saved for their retirement.” He’s right that it should shut down any talk of cutting social security, but it certainly won’t.

I’ve been pleased to see a lot more talk about raising Social Security benefits. What we’ve had until recently is a typically American “two sided” debate: on the one side is that we should cut or even eliminate Social Security; the other other side is that we shouldn’t do that. Yes, that’s our beloved Democratic Party: always taking a strong stand for not making things even worse. Even with the recent movement among some liberals, the current Democratic position is just to resist cuts.

Let’s compare our Social Security benefits to similar (but poorer) countries. The minimum benefit for an individual retiring in France is roughly $13,000 per year. The minimum benefit in the United Kingdom is $12,000 per year. Even poor Spain is $10,000 per year. Compare this to the minimum benefit in the United States: zero. Of course, the government will provide a base according to need. And for an individual that base is a maximum of $8,000.

If you look at the maximum benefit, you will find that the United States looks about the same. We are extremely stingy to our elderly population. And note, we don’t pay in much less. In fact, employees directly pay in a lot less in Spain. And the other countries generally allow a lot more flexibility. And the retirement age is younger. And they live longer in those countries. It really sucks to be poor and old in America. And we should be ashamed, except the power elite in this country don’t seem to be capable of shame.

So what are we going to do? Frankly, I have very little hope. The forty year push in the Democratic Party to meet with the Republicans (only to have them move to the edge of the extreme right) has brought us here. And the people are on the verge of rewarding amazingly bad behavior on the part of the Republicans by giving them the Senate. At this point, the official desire of the Democratic Party to simply hold ground on Social Security may be the best we can do. But that’s a self-fulfilling thing: it is our only option because for forty years, it was our only desire.